Living Green in 2012

7.So long, Food Pyramid: The USDA's iconic triangular guide to family feeding recommendations is officially gone. And thank goodness! It's been replaced by a colorful plate that emphasizes making half of your child's meal fruits and vegetables. This new school of thought will produce healthier kids and a healthier planet. Get started at choose myplate.gov. The site is loaded with cool tools, including the Food-a-pedia, which offers nutritional information on 8,000 foods and allows you to compare foods side by side.

8. Kids in the kitchen: Thanks in part to Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution and First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move campaign, kids are spending more time in the kitchen. Two of my favorite kids' cookbooks are Mollie Katzen's Pretend Soup and Other Real Recipes: A Cookbook for Preschoolers & Up (try the Chewy Energy Circles or the Polka Dot Rice) and Salad People and More Real Recipes. For an online resource, don't miss spatulatta.com; sisters Belle and Liv Gerasole have 350 step-by-step video recipes that teach kids how to cook. At age 8, Liv became the only single-digit winner on the planet of a James Beard Award. (She shared the award with Belle, who was 10.)

9. Healthy eats on aisle five: Want to know how natural that breakfast cereal is? Use the GoodGuide app (free). Scan any product with a bar code, and find out how green it is while shopping. The app offers health, environmental, and social-performance ratings for more than 130,000 food, personal care, and household products. Customize settings to prioritize the issues you're most concerned about.